38 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
here apparent in these unsheathed bayonets in the backs of schoolgirls.’ With
the mob momentarily defeated, Minnijean Brown remarked that ‘for the first
time in my life, I feel like an American citizen.’
There was considerable turmoil inside the school as the Little Rock Nine
headed for Central High. Almost 40 per cent of the 2,000 white students
stayed away that first day. Inside the school, there was a mixed response.
While many whites walked out when black students entered their class-
rooms, some whites ate lunch with them or invited them to join the glee
club. Others shunned or abused them and their white friends. ‘I’ll show you
niggers the Supreme Court can’t run my life,’ one white student declared. To
guarantee the black students’ safety, a trooper was assigned to each one. But
the troopers were barred from locker rooms, lavatories, classrooms, and the
cafeteria, where trouble awaited.
The paratroopers withdrew from Central by November, making it open
season on the Little Rock Nine. The federalized guardsmen stayed until the
following June, but they offered little protection. As a power vacuum devel-
oped, rabid segregationist students returned to school to force their black
classmates to leave. The bullies spat on, tripped, and slugged the black stu-
dents, and burned them in effigy. They wrote graffiti on the walls that read,
‘Nigger Go Home.’ They burgled lockers and plotted to dynamite the school
building. Gloria Ray was shoved down a stairwell and forced to ‘dance’ as
firecrackers were thrown at her feet. Her assailant snarled, ‘I’m going to get
you out of this school if I have to kill you.’ Melba Pattillo was doused with
raw eggs and nearly blinded by a chemical thrown at her eyes. The steady
abuse reduced Elizabeth Eckford to tears, and she told vice principal
Elizabeth Huckaby, ‘I want to go home.’ Huckaby counseled the black stu-
dents that their continuing bravery would make it easier for the next group
to enter Central High. Not even the dynamiting of Carlotta Walls’s home
could make them quit. Suspicions arose that only the governor could have
orchestrated the campaign of terror.
In a year of ‘trench warfare,’ only one black student retaliated. Minnijean
Brown dumped a bowl of chili on her tormentor who kept shouting, ‘nigger,
nigger, nigger,’ and the delighted black cafeteria workers applauded. When
Minnijean was suspended temporarily, she remarked bitterly: ‘They throw
rocks at you, they spill ink on you – and we just have to be little lambs and
take it.’ The suspension became expulsion in February, when a white girl and
Minnijean took turns calling each other ‘nigger bitch’ and ‘white trash.’ After
Minnijean left, cards appeared reading, ‘One down, eight to go.’ The remain-
ing black students joked grimly that they were learning ‘readin,’ writin,’ and
riotin’ .’ Through it all, Daisy Bates was a tower of strength, reassuring frus-
trated students and worried parents that the crucial experiment would turn
out all right. Finally, graduation day came, and the police made sure that